Live Service
The Absurdity of Live Service Games: Playing Alone with an Internet Connection
The rise of Live Service Games, or Games as a Service (GaaS), has radically shifted the landscape of video gaming over the past decade. These "living games" receive continuous updates, seasonal content, and frequent expansions that keep players engaged long after the initial release. On paper, the idea sounds fantastic: buy a game once—or in many cases, get it for free—and enjoy endless updates that keep the game fresh and exciting. But beneath the shiny surface of titles like Apex Legends, Rainbow Six Siege, Counter-Strike: GO (now CS2), and Genshin Impact, there lies a darker, more inconvenient truth: the gaming industry is selling us the illusion of ownership while slowly eroding our ability to actually own anything at all.
The GaaS Model: It’s (Mostly) Multiplayer… But What About Single Player?
The most successful examples of Games as a Service are predominantly multiplayer experiences. Apex Legends, for instance, operates as a free-to-play battle royale, with cosmetic microtransactions and battle passes that drive revenue. Rainbow Six Siege, similarly, keeps its player base hooked with tactical multiplayer combat, continually adding operators, maps, and game modes. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (now rebranded with its new engine as CS2) remains one of the most beloved competitive shooters on the planet, also thriving on microtransactions and a fervent community. Even Genshin Impact, which is primarily a single-player experience, keeps players online gamblers gambling with frequent content drops and in-game purchases.
While multiplayer games embracing the live service model makes a certain amount of sense—community engagement is critical to keeping player numbers up—what’s particularly galling is seeing the model creep into single-player experiences. Games like Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Valhalla are notorious for this. Even if you have no desire to play multiplayer or interact with a virtual storefront, you still need to connect to the internet, often just to play by yourself. It’s as if the industry collectively decided that gamers can no longer be trusted to enjoy their experiences offline, even when no other humans are involved.
The absurdity reaches new heights when you realize that single-player games, which traditionally allowed for full ownership and replayability, are increasingly locking core features behind online requirements. Why should someone need to connect to a server—liable to vanish at the whim of a company executive—just to enjoy a single-player campaign? The answer, of course, is simple: because you don’t really own the game.
"Own Nothing, and You'll Be Happy" – Until the Servers Shut Down
Remember The Crew? It was an open-world racing game that Ubisoft proudly marketed as a seamless, always-online experience. Whether you loved or hated the game, many players invested time, money, and emotions into it. Then, out of nowhere, Ubisoft made the decision to shut down the servers. Not only were multiplayer features gone, but players couldn’t even access the game they'd paid for. If that wasn't enough of a gut punch, Ubisoft also decided to remove the game from everyone’s digital libraries. One moment, you have a game you paid for—the next, it’s wiped from existence.
The Crew's shutdown isn't an isolated incident, but a harbinger of a future where ownership becomes meaningless. The industry is slowly marching towards a reality where players "own" nothing, and publishers hold all the power. With the industry's embrace of live services, you're often not buying a game—you're buying the right to access it for as long as the servers stay online.
What Happens When Steam Shuts Down?
One of the most terrifying prospects for gamers is the question: What happens if Steam goes down? Valve’s Steam platform has an iron grip on the PC gaming market, and with it, the fate of millions of digital libraries. While Steam has built a reputation as a relatively user-friendly platform, it's still a corporation with servers, business decisions, and—most importantly—End User License Agreements (EULA) that state you aren’t buying a game; you’re buying a license to use it. In essence, you're renting access to your games indefinitely, as long as Valve feels like keeping the lights on.
In contrast, platforms like GOG.com stand as a beacon of hope for those who still value true ownership. GOG takes a different approach by offering DRM-free games, meaning that once you buy a game, you can download an offline installer and keep it forever, independent of GOG’s servers. If GOG were to suddenly vanish into the ether, your games would still be playable—a comfort for those of us who remember what it was like to actually own a physical copy of a game.
EULA: You Don’t Own Anything, You Rent It
The issue comes down to EULAs—those long, unreadable agreements we all click "accept" on without a second thought. Buried within are the rights that govern your access to the game. In most cases, they explicitly state that the game is licensed, not sold. In practice, this means that the publisher can revoke your access at any time, without refund or recourse. It also means that if servers go down—whether permanently or just because your internet cuts out—you’re stuck twiddling your thumbs.
This precarious arrangement becomes especially dangerous when single-player games are tied to online services. If a server shutdown kills access to multiplayer content, it’s bad enough, but when it also kills access to a solo experience? That’s absurd. Imagine buying a novel only to have it snatched away from your bookshelf the moment the publisher decides it’s out of print.
The Future of Gaming: Own Nothing, Pay Everything
The trend of Games as a Service isn’t going anywhere. As long as companies like Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, and Activision able to milk the players (aka cash cows) from microtransactions, seasonal content, and online-only features, they’ll continue down this path. But as consumers, we need to ask ourselves where this ends. Are we willing to accept a world where our access to entertainment is contingent on the whims of corporations? Where single-player games that should be timeless experiences are instead fleeting rentals?
More importantly, what happens when platforms like Steam decide to pack up and leave? While at this point, Steam isn’t in any imminent danger, the hypothetical isn’t far-fetched. With games tied to cloud-based services, when the servers go dark, so too do your digital possessions. Without the option to download an offline installer, you could be left with nothing but memories recorded on your YouTube Channel.
The rise of live service games has brought undeniable benefits to multiplayer communities, but the creeping tide of this model into single-player games and the broader erosion of ownership should give us all pause. If we aren’t careful, we may find ourselves living in a world where we "own nothing" and, far from being happy, we’re left longing for a time when games were something you could keep, cherish, and play on your own terms—without an internet connection required.
